The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-04-09
JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION.

We find here formulated in single
proposition the central topic of the Cos
pei, which, however .variously stated,
prevailingly constitutes the substance
of the apostolic teaching and preaching.
1t is Jesus and as an adjunct, linked
essentially with his personality, the
resurrection.
Philosophers and theologians have
discussed upon the bald and compare
lively barren doctrine of the immortal
ity of the soul; have framed arguments
in its proof, and sought analogies in
its illustration, but, singularly, neither
Christ nor the apostles say anything
about it, but have everything to say of
life, and use better and more sufficipg
word than Immortality with reference
TO its endless continuance-it is resur-
rection. Not few worn and weary
souls have no wish for Immortality, in
itself considered, and would willingly
resign existence at the close Of its pres
ent stage, to be at once and forever re.
iieved of the struggle, the care, the in
anition and the perplexing problems in
cidental to life so far as they have
known it. "There is almost an awful
mockery in saying to man whose only
notion of life is simply keeping alive,
You are never to die"
Mere perpetuity of existence is no
boon, 10 subject of pleasing hope, and
fond desire;" it may be the direst Of
evils; going on in unceasing inirmity
and decrepitude, fettered by sin, racked
by pain, with yearnings unfulfilled and
hope deferred, and prey to fearful
fancies. Who would long for such an
Immortality =? We would rather say
with the tabled Tithonus, who asked
of the gods, Give me Immortality"
and came at last to cry, when marred,
wasted, withered, mere shadow of his
former self, "Ah cruel Immortality,
let me go, take back the gift" Swift
describes the miserable Struedburgs,
(the immortal), whom he saw, as the
most notifying spectacle he ever wit
messed; and death in contrast with an
existence like this is no longer the
X ng of Terrors, but friend whose
summons we would readily obey.
No such unsatisfactory goal Of our
earthly course is set before US in the
gospel; it is resurrection, a rising again;
a renewal or making life new again;
mortality swallowed up of life, not
a retention of the old passions, and
a plodding on in an intermiuable hope
less career, bat an entering into rest;"
rest, not of inertia and Incidence, but of
life and all its conditions in perfect
equipoise, as is seen in the natural
world; in the teeming exuberance of
spring, when the whole creation is pal
pitating with vigor and loneliness; thee
orchards bursting into foliage and
bloom; the air melodious with song; the
broad earth sending up the incense of
sweet perfume, and even the most Ian
guild frame receives a resistless impulse
of energy and partakes of the glorious
revifcatioa in which heaven and earth
rejoices.
This is the teaching of the chapter
which gives an extended treatment of
this subject. Il Cor. XVI THAT which
thou sowest is not quickened except it
die, and that which thou sowest thou
s0westno the body that shall be, but bare
grain, it may chance of wheat, or of
some other grain. But God giveth it a
body as it hath pleased him, so, also is
the resurrection OF the dead"
Look at the "bare grain" and then at
the miracle of grace and beauty that is
raised from it up into the sunlight; it is
the chosen theology of the meagerness
of the present as compared with the
glory of the future state, not of a mere
prolongation of being, but an unfolding
and uplifting; growth and expansion
into fullness of life and into sublime
onditions, no more describable to our
present comprehension than a gorgeous
sunset, or a lovely landscape could be
to one born blind. The only effective
process would be to open his eyes to
work change in him. "We shall all be
changed" Il Cor. XIV. 81.
Some one has said: we are too much
in the habit of regarding what we call
death, as the elimination of disease
instead of the first pulse of the new
strength shaking itself free from the
old mouldy remnants of earth's gar
ments.n We are not alone to enter into
glory, but glory is to be revealed in
u.s." rom. viii. 1S( We shall not
bring into the celestial splendors the
old tainted, distorted life of which, may
hap, we were 50 weary, but are to be
''made meet to enter into the inheri-
lance Of the saints in light, redeemed,
radiant, rapturOus, satisfied. 81 shall
be satisfied when | awake in thy like
ness"
Strange that so ecstatic view, as is
thus presented by the doctrine of the
resurrection, should have been so little
discerned, and unlike the apostles, who